The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

he?”
    “A monster.” Medea’s head lifted in the darkness. “I didn’t see it at first. What I saw was a boy who looked at me with adoring eyes. Who talked with me about the one subject we both loved most. Who started bringing me little gifts. We worked in the trench together. We ate every meal together. Eventually we slept together.” She paused. “That’s when things began to change.”
    “How?”
    “It was as if he no longer considered me a separate person. I’d become part of him. As if he’d devoured me, absorbed me. If I walked to the other side of the camp, he followed me. If I spoke to anyone else, he insisted on knowing what we’d talked about. If I even looked at another man, he became upset. He was always watching, always spying.”
    It was such an old story, thought Jane, the same story that had played out so many times between other lovers. A story that too often ended with homicide detectives standing at a bloody crime scene. Medea was one of the lucky ones; she had managed to stay alive.
    Yet she had never really escaped.
    “It was Gemma who took me aside and pointed out the obvious,” said Medea.
    “Gemma Hamerton?”
    Medea nodded. “She was one of the grad students at the site. A few years older than me, and a hundred years wiser. She saw what was happening, and she told me I needed to assert myself. And if he didn’t back off, then I should tell him to go to hell. Oh, Gemma was good at that, standing up for herself. But I wasn’t strong enough then. I wasn’t able to break away.”
    “What happened?”
    “Gemma went to Kimball. She told him to get his son under control. Bradley must have learned about the conversation, because the next thing he said to me was that I must never talk to Gemma again.”
    “I hope you told him where to go.”
    “I should have,” Medea said softly. “But I didn’t have the backbone. It seems impossible to believe now. When I think back to what sort of girl I was, I don’t recognize myself. I don’t know that person. That utterly pitiful victim who couldn’t even save herself.”
    “How did you finally break away from him?”
    “It was what he did to Gemma. One night, while she was sleeping, her tent flap was sewn shut. Then the tent was doused with gasoline and set on fire. I was the one who managed to slice the tent open and pull her out.”
    “Bradley actually tried to kill her?”
    “No one could prove it, but I knew. That’s when I finally understood what he was capable of. I got on a plane and came home.”
    “But it wasn’t over.”
    “No, it wasn’t.” Medea stood and went back to the window. “It was just the beginning.” By now, Jane’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she could see the woman’s pale hand clutching the curtain. Could see her shoulders momentarily tense as a car’s headlights slowly passed by on the street and then moved on.
    “I was pregnant,” Medea said softly.
    Jane stared at her in astonishment. “Josephine is
Bradley’s
daughter?”
    “Yes.” She turned and faced Jane. “But she can’t
ever
know that.”
    “She told us her father was a French archaeologist.”
    “All her life I’ve lied to her. I told her that her father was a good man who died before she was born. I don’t know if she actually believes me, but it’s the story I’ve stuck to.”
    “And what about the other story you told her? Why you kept moving and changing your names? She thinks you were running from the police.”
    Medea shrugged. “It did explain things, didn’t it?”
    “But it’s not true.”
    “I had to give her
some
reason, a reason that wouldn’t terrify her. Better to be running from the police than from a monster.”
    Especially when that monster is your own father.
    “If you were being stalked, why run? Why not just go to the police?”
    “You think I didn’t try that? A few months after I came home, Bradley turned up at my college campus. He told me we were soul mates. He told me I belonged to him. I told him I never wanted to see him again. He started following me, sending me flowers every fucking day. I threw them away and called the police and even managed to get him arrested. But then his father sent his attorneys to take care of the problem. When your father’s Kimball Rose, you’re untouchable.” She paused. “Then it got worse. Much worse.”
    “How?”
    “Bradley showed up one day with an old friend. Someone who scared me even more than Bradley ever did.”
    “Jimmy